hooking the elephant

My elephant project marked the end of my life of leisure. I started working on it before I knew I would have a job, and now I am so involved with work that I almost didn’t have time to put the finishing touches on it.

Last Thursday I took the elephant to work so I could take some pictures with some co-workers for a costume contest.

Friday was the big rainy day out for the pachyderm. My friends and band mates Robin, Sam, and Sujith, all helped me stretch the elephant to a full 10 yards in length. Robin’s friends Gabe and Mike also helped out, as well as a new friend Jacques!

We made an initial rainy walk up Front St. where we stopped by and marched through some of the galleries, making sure to get some cheddar dill soup from the Oak St. Bistro stand. It is a weird restaurant, because they are only really open for lunch, and I told them they needed to have a Sunday Morning Bloody Mary Bar. Luckily, they’re moving buildings soon, and promised they would do it at the new site.

We headed back down to Toad Suck Square for a super secret special flashmob/dancemob. I was at the tail, but Sam was at the head, and she kept marching us closer and closer to the dancers, as if we were going to become apart of the show!

We walked around some more and crashed Melissa Gill’s art show at the end of the night! One of our friends was playing music on a bass, and so we even danced around on the parquet floors a little bit.

The one down side to the ArtsFest was the weather. We were somewhat protected from the rain under the Chinese Dragon-like train. The inflatable 31 feet tall “Painted Pachyderm” did not make it out that night. I would have liked the two to meet.

On the way to have a nightcap, we all walked down Front St. picking up the pylons walkingconway.com had put out to redirect the foot traffic into each gallery. Someone started singing through one, and eventually, we had a pylon band. I was once involved in a spontaneous kazoo parade that was supposed to march on the capital building one night but only ended up going around the block. The kazoo parade and the pylon band were very similar experiences.

My friend Robin even wore an elephant sweater!

I feel like my entire crafting experience was building to this point. The elephant was on a huge scale. I basically knew what I needed to do, but I was unsure how it would all come together, or if it would even come together in time. It felt a little like a dissertation. I knew a bunch of people were going to see it, and that it was going to be doing something more than promoting my crafting and fabrication skills. And then we paraded it around town! If you see any fun crochet contests send them my way and I’ll enter it!